if i had a superpower

If I had a superpower, it’d be self-sabotage.

I prefer to think of it that way instead of “epic self-destructive device.”

The reach of this power? Knows no bounds.

Relationships with other humans? Bam.

Burgeoning life as an academic? Kazam!

Writing what I love simply for the joy? Oh, yeah. I’ve fucked that up, too.

I used to think that being conscious of a problem, of a default in one’s behavior, would ipso facto lead to its demise.

See something, say something, stop it.

But, ah, alas. It ain’t so.

No, I go right on Gojira-ing through my daily freaking life,

Taking one self-inflicted body blow after another

And yet still: these patterns? I can’t break.

Suffice it to say, I am a general fuck-up.

I’d like to stop thank you now please.

I’m Almost a Trained Professional

My grad program wants to know: what are my goals for the coming year?

Damn straight. But I’ve gotta do a few other things first.

• Pass my comprehensive exams: 2 questions, 30 pages, 72 hours, coming up in early September. Hooah!

• Drink less. Curse in class more. Especially when we’re talking about mpreg.

• Write for an hour a day. Be it a fic or an academic essay, spend 60 minutes a day writing for myself.

• Try try try to stop comparing my writing to other people’s. It’s not the most awesome way to determine my work’s relative quality, though it’s awful tempting. How can something that brings me so much joy also be such a source of anxiety? Haven’t figured that out quite yet.

• Get an academic article published in a scholarly journal. Accept that I probably won’t get a job based on kudos I receive on Archive of Our Own.

…probably.

• Keep polishing my theoretical lens, one that combines fan studies, rhetoric, and (*sob*) performance studies.

• Take pleasure in my goddamn research without drowning in it, that self-centered joy.

• Spend as much time with people as I do with my laptop. Preferably with people I dig.

• Stop being a dick. Or at least: moderate my dickishness so as to avoid alienating everyone that I like in my life. Get less good at pushing people away.
  

• Give a presentation at a proper Rhetoric conference. Or, as my dissertation director put it, figure out how to sell myself/position myself/other oblique reference to prostitution in my chosen field. Because the whole job thing’s coming up faster than I can believe.

• Collaborate with a colleague on a fic or a more “academic” piece, because it’s so damn much fun.

• Remember that just because I can say something in a public, online space doesn’t mean that I have to. Or even that I should. Because some people don’t like being characters in my electronic life.

• Be nice to myself every once and a while.